Video

Facebook wants Live Video to be the future, paying close to $50mn to celebrities and publishers to create live video and prioritizing it in their newsfeed algorithm. While Facebook may be making the most headlines right now, it’s not the only company putting the spotlight  on live video. In the last year Meerkat (now pivoted), Periscope (now owned by Twitter), YouNow and most recently YouTube and tumblr launched live streaming.

So, why is Facebook prioritizing streaming video? Because it “is looking to compete for television advertising... [and] is anxious about the future. People are sharing less about themselves, which slows Facebook’s growth and cuts at the heart of its most profitable product, the News Feed…[this] is one attempt to solve that problem.” 

Live streaming may very well be a Facebook driven play for revenue and relevance, and not necessarily a question of demand. For instance, this recent Reuters study reports that over 3/4ths of people rely on text for their news, finding it faster and more convenient than video. What’s more, these findings apply to video at large -- not just live video; a majority of people prefer text to any type of video when getting their news.

Here, we look at different video formats:

Facebook is a content creator

An excellent piece on re/code used Facebook and media companies as an example when considering "what happens when what you do is now done by someone else." But, the author didn't take it far enough, arguing that Facebook (a platform) now does two of the five things that media companies traditionally did, here:

But actually, Facebook does all five.

1. Curates via algorithm (and apparently people too)

2. Distributes to audiences through their platform. 

3. Monetizes through advertising. 

4. Hosts content through Instant Articles.

5. Creates content by paying publishers to post certain formats, for instance Live Video, and through its acquisitions like Oculus Rift, which creates both hardware and some proof of concept VR experiences. 

Now, some may argue that Facebook isn't really "creating" but sponsoring content. And to a certain extent that is true, but it is certainly moving more towards creating, and it is naive to think they won't become a "publisher." More likely is that Facebook just won't call themselves that. 

Facebook is already a concern to publishers, who are losing control over the distribution of their content. But, at least for now they still create the content that Facebook distributes. What happens to publishers when Facebook decides to properly move into content production?

It seems likely that those who have niche business and have already moved to subscription models -- showing that individuals are willing to pay for their content -- will be okay, but will have to figure out how to work that model into distributed content. More teasers (a nice example is what FastCo does with Medium) or working with other publishers to build a paywall on/with Facebook (Google's AMP works with subscription models, for instance), seem to plausible outcomes.

But, what happens to everyone else?

App strategies

According to Digiday, “Publishers' on-again, off-again relationship with apps is back on.” In the past several weeks alone we’ve seen launches from Quartz, the London Times and Refinery29. If we look further back to Q4 2016, we can include the WSJ city app in this list as well (worth noting also that the WSJ has plans for two more launches in 2016).

Despite these new apps coming to market, the expanding ecosystem with which to get content to users (social media, chat apps, push notification apps like Facebook’s Notify, etc) brings up the question: do apps still matter? If so, for how long?

The greatest challenge is just getting people to download an app, even if the promise of a good experience is great. The Strategy of this latest latest bunch seems to be targeting audience segments or experiences, an idea that often works on social (Digiday). Could this be the solution?

Virtual Reality: Market Adoption

After taking quite a dive into VR, my general understanding is that adoption is predicated on content. Content, is dependent on -- though not limited to -- the (1) price and ease of production (2) the distribution of content, (3) price of hardware, (4) competitors, (5) overall experience and engagement.

So, the content:

While we are starting to see variability in the technology (headsets, production and distribution), content seems to be bifurcated into small scale entry points (for instance the WSJ’s Nasdaq roller coaster and NYT’s VR content) and big budget immersives (like The Martian and Samsung’s roller coaster experiences and EVE: Valkyrie and Lucky’s Tale games).

Another interesting way to parse the content is by who is likely to fund it -- consumers or advertisers.  Entertainment and gaming industries are offering the most interesting experiences, certainly, but they are also the most incentivised to do so as they hope to monetize VR experiences as a separate product. Our peers, on the other hand, seem to be looking to VR as an ads (the NYT is already margin positive (Seeking Alpha) on their VR)  and/or reach initiative. Other business models could one day include subscriptions, in-experience purchases, and more

Given these two ways of looking at it, we have a content map that looks like: 

And with a few examples:

Despite the limitations of being in the very nascent stages of VR, there are a number of publishers that have created VR or 360 video content in order to both “make the market” and experiment with this form of storytelling. Gannet recently announced they will be creating serialised content and a daily VR show in 2016. Other companies who have produced either 360 or VR experiences include: BBC, Discovery, Fusion, Gannet, WSJ, NYT, Washington Post, Frontline, Vice and more.